Monday, June 27, 2011

"the skinny" - chapter nine - by means of arson

foolishly I didn't put a date on chile colorado my first bamboo rod
I do know that I picked it up the day before I drove up to the rio grande by way of the san juan river
the day after that I blooded the rod in no time flat
drifting through the texas hole w/ steve and chris
that date was july 9 2006

I'm also fairly sure I flamed and split a culm up at mike's shop for rod number two
I seem to remember mike flaming it though I may be wrong
I took the strips home bought a heat gun and vise
and started working the nodes


as I was doing so I noticed some bad news charlie brown...


at least half the strips had a soft spot like shown above and were kaput
not for the last time I was forced to start over

so in all likelihood I flamed and split again up at mike's 
I know for a fact that I did it this time
not wanting to repeat the fiasco

I know it may sound as though I'm blaming mike
but I'm not - he'd done this xxx amount of times
while I had done most of one culm so it would be far more likely that I was the guilty party
death to bamboo by means of arson


whatever
eventually I got this one done
rod is dated 10-18-07


somewhere around about this time adam had started again to build a rod
having given up the first time perhaps because he found the work too hard
or he couldn't find the time
but he stuck to it and I found myself traveling often to congress w/ him

I started to accumulate some tools
I still needed plenty
first and foremost planing forms
I couldn't afford them - well I suppose I could have...who knows
matt shliske generously offered me his old set - I jumped on it
ordered a lie-nielson plane and scraper


sometime shortly later down the road my father bought me a depth gauge and binder
at which point you could say we were off and running...
actually it was more like learning to crawl

No comments: